[HECnet] VMS games?

[Mark Darvill]

Flight was the "game" we played when we could get access to suitable hardware in DEC, i do remember playing it on a new vax9000 in multi user mode and it was hot! For those who have not come across the program, it was a multi user simulation with many planes and airfields which also ran over computers connected via decnet. There was also a toolkit to create your own planes and airfields.

http://www.tmk.com/ftp/vms-freeware/decwindows/

Found a copy above. Maybe another use for hecnet....

Mark

On 10 Oct 2013, at 23:21, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:


On Oct 10, 2013, at 5:01 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:

On 10/10/2013 04:51 PM, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
Is there a collection of 'standard' games for VMS (VAX or AXP) =
downloadable from somewhere?

What I'm referring to is something like the 'bsdgames' package available =
on most Linux distros..

VMS, as well as the hardware it runs on, was a relatively expensive in its
day.   VMS systems were NOT purchased for games play.   There are games that
were produced and submitted to DECUS, but there's never been any definitive
packaging thereof.

Then again, CDC Cyber systems are *way* more expensive than any VAX, and nevertheless much of the innovation in games (especially role playing games and multi-user interactive games) was done there.

(Read up on "PLATO" for the details.)

Very true, but to be fair, PLATO was a teaching system, aimed (mostly) at
children.

Yes, PLATO was intended as a teaching system.   Children?   Not quite.   It was aimed initially at college students, subsequently to both younger and older age groups, from elementary school to adult education.   I think the majority of it was high school and beyond.

For example, the FAA used to do a lot of training on PLATO, until quite recently in fact.

    paul